Solution bags are used for holding and/or dispensing various types of consumables, such as filters, membranes, assays, nutrients, innoculants, buffers, antibiotics, isotopes, hepatitis and AIDS indicators, samples etc. The solution bags include at least one tube mounted at an access edge so that each tube may communicate with the interior of the bag. One of the tubes is a pig-tail which is an elongated tube having a terminal seal at its end remote from the access edge of the solution bag. The pig-tailed tube would be located at a dispensing site where the terminal seal would be opened to permit the contents of the bag to be dispensed.
When such solution bags are steamed sterilized the bags are mounted within an outer seal bag. In conventional practices the pig-tail tube becomes saturated, opaque and severely softened. In practice the pig-tail tube would be welded to another tube section to create communication between the solution bag and, for example, a tube leading to a patient. The bag solution traverses up the pig-tail tube to the terminal end before the welding procedure. The difficulties that result from the pig-tail tube becoming saturated, opaque and severely softened reduce the weld strength by about 50%.
Similar problems exist for solution bags holding blood wherein the blood is removed from a plastic tube connected to the bag interior.